This document summarizes an evaluation of a group media project that included a music video, CD cover, and magazine ad. It discusses how the project used and challenged conventions of real media products by targeting a specific audience. Feedback was gathered from audiences on the CD cover designs. New media technologies like Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and online research tools were used to construct, plan, and evaluate the project. The evaluation concludes the group worked well together but faced challenges when original artists backed out, requiring more time be spent rushing to complete the project.

1. EVALUATION

2. INTRODUCTION During this evaluation, I will be explaining how as a group we produced our media product. This consisted of a music video, CD cover and magazine Ad. We will be answering four questions which are: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? What have you learned from your audience feedback? How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

4. MARKETING AIMS Before we actually managed to get filming, we had to complete our marketing aims, this was basically about identifying out marketing strategy, who we wanted to target through unique selling points, interests desires etc. The target consumers for our video are males and females, ranging from older teens to young adults (15-22), however there is some crossover to older fans as well. The ethnicity of the target consumer is mixed i.e. Black, White and Asian. The geographic location of the target consumer is mixed; in his bio the artist states he has fans in Indonesia and the US as well as the UK. The target consumer would also more likely be working class or below, but probably no higher than middle class as the lyrics in the song are about dreaming to make it big and successful. I would think that our unique selling point would still be that because he is an Asian rapper and this is the stereotype people think of when you think about the conventional UK rap.

5. Challenging the conventions of real media products I would say that our media product does challenge the forms and conventions of real media products. This is because our product does use factors that target our audience. We specifically targeted audiences that would be listening to this genre of music and would possibly wait for further music from the artist. The product uses footage that can be related to the stereotypical UK rap videos but its when you listen to the lyrics and watch the video all together that you realise that its totally different and it is not filmed on the streets for a start and also of what he is wearing.

6. A typically rap video would normally consist of more than one person, you would usually have the artist and then a group of guys that would either be the artists entourage or friends. Something like the image on the right where the artist is rapping and the other guys are just there around him doing some arm action. Our product challenges that almost in every way in the sense that its just him alone. Having him alone in the video and following the lyrics is a representation that to make it big its all down to you and no-one else. In the picture above they are all in hoodies with caps on and all in black clothing. Our artist again is totally opposite. This is a big factor that challenges the conventions of media products because there are many people that aspire to singers, rappers etc. so the image you give of to them is crucial. With our artist he is dressed in smart wearing a white blazer with jeans and a bit of ‘ bling ’ .

7. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

8. LOCATION AND SETTING The main theme of the video and lyrics is about being successful in life, he talks about having big things in life. This reflected our music video in the sense that he was filmed during a photo-shoot, this reflected the lyrics because he wants to be big in the music industry doing videos and photo-shoot. So we thought of creating our video in a photo-shoot mode, not only is this theme in the lyrics, this is also the artists dream in real life, so during the video you could see his passion which made it easier for us to work with him. The look was something similar to Jay Sean – maybe:

9. Photo shoot We carried out numerous photo shoot during the recording of our video. we wanted to get some images of our artist doing natural poses of him acting towards the music video. We made sure that we had a photographer taking pictures every time we did a recording, we also set up a few sessions where we purely took photos so that we could use some of these images in our work for documentation and for our CD covers and magazine Ads. We used many different techniques of photos from close-up shots, medium shots and long shots. We also had high angle and low angle shots too. Once we went through the photo shoot a computer, we soon began to realize where the photos were better and where they were not. We rearranged another photo shoot where we managed to get the lighting was correct and was white rather than a yellow. Also the photos looked better when he wasn't looking at the camera and was smiling rather than when we was looking at the camera and was smiling. This was because when he looked at the camera it would be looking at the audience and he seemed happy. But that defeated the point of the lyrics as he is meant to be serious and wanting things he doesn't have.

10. Photo shoot

11. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

12. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK We had to carry out our audience feedback to see if our products would sell in the future and even if it met what our target audience wanted. Our target audience is very important to us as they are the ones who we have been targeting through the whole project, if we meet their specification it means that we have met our target.

13. Audience feedback on cd cover As part of the project, we had to design a cd cover for our artist as if we were to sell this on a bigger scale. We went through many different ideas as a group and individually until we narrowed them down to specifics. We used many different pictures from our earlier photo shoots, this was the main reasons we went through several shoot, so that we would have a wide variety of pictures that we could then have the option of picking out certain ones. We narrowed them down to the following:

14. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

15. Using technologies to construct the video The main piece of technology we used was Final Cut Pro, an editing software created by Apple. Once we had filmed our pieces that we needed, the next big challenge was to create a video using the software with the footage. It was a bit hard to get your head around because there were so many different options, but because I had Final Cut Pro on my laptop, it gave our group a slight advantage as I could play around with the software and experiment before we needed to edit. Experimenting at home did help in many ways because I then thought of volunteering for editing to make things easier. I would think that one of the hardest parts of editing was to try and get the lyrics of the song to match the artist miming the song in his video. The reason this was so hard was because we put together loads of different clips together with different scenes which meant that the lyrics could be of by Millie seconds. But we were lucky that we didn ’ t have too much speeding up and slowing down to do.

16. Using technologies to construct our cd cover The main software's used for the creation of our cd cover was Photoshop. I did use bits of InDesign, but the predominant software was Photoshop. I didn't find using this software difficult at all, I knew exactly what i wanted it to look like and knew exactly how to. The reason I was so comfortable using this software was because I do Graphics Design as one of my other subjects so I knew how to use Photoshop. The main effect I was going for in my CD cover was I wanted the artist to stand out from the back ground, to do this, made the background in to a grey scale and kept the artist in full colour.

18. Using technologies in research and in planning To carry out our research, the main technology we used was the internet. As a group we used the places we know of best, this included social networking sites, video sites and artists own site, things like Facebook, my space, YouTube, I tunes, vevo. I would say the best site for research was Facebook and YouTube, the reason for this was because we all knew of a few people that were into music and were unsigned. But overall YouTube was the easiest way to find unsigned artists. The only problem we faced with YouTube was that some of the people we liked were not located anywhere local.

19. Final conclusion Looking back though the last few months, I do think we created a successful project, although we came across many problems through the course like our two original artists backing out, we did manage to overcome, it did drop us back a lot but it wasn ’ t something we could control. As a group I do think we worked well together as we all had to many ideas that we kept throwing forwards. Also the fact that we all specialized n certain parts i.e. photographer, editing, cameraman etc. If I was to re-create this assignment, there are still many things I would do. To begin with I would want to find an artist that wants to co-operate with us and wants to take this seriously as we did, also I would have liked to take this project more calmly as I felt that the last few weeks were just too rushed. But that is because we lost about 6 weeks at the beginning as we got quite far into the project with all our research and out artist backed out.